Open Book
by mosylu
Summary: "In my experience, doing what I do? It's the people who say things like 'I'm an open book' are the ones who have all the secrets." "Your sample may be a little skewed," he pointed out. "Doing what you do." Or how gadget-building, music talk, peanut-butter M&Ms, and late-night philosophy are things they both need right now.


(A/N) Written before 1x19. Apologies for OOCness. I haven't watched much Arrow. Music note: the Caravan Palace song is "Dragons" the Great Big Sea song is "Lukey," and the Smashing Pumpkins song is "My Blue Heaven" (actually a cover of a song that was ridiculously popular in about 1923, no joke). All worth a listen.

* * *

"Tell me a secret," Laurel said.

"I have no secrets," Cisco told her. "I'm an open book."

They were in the lab. It was very late. He was building a gadget for her. "Canary cry," he'd said happily.

"Canaries tweet."

"Black canaries do a lot more," he'd said. "Or at least that's the plan."

The plan, apparently, took a long time to come to fruition. He'd had it half-built already, but the other half needed her input. He wasn't as familiar with the Black Canary's routine and style as he was with the Flash's.

She didn't mind. She liked his lab, which was a jumble of spare parts and candy stashes and a Ms. Marvel poster on the wall.

Somehow, the calm wasn't broken, but enhanced by the wild mix of music murmuring from his phone, plugged into a dock. "Caravan Palace," he said when she asked about the rather avant-garde, big-band-inflected instrumental that made her toe tap, or "Great Big Sea" about the Irish-sounding song peppered with "Aha, me boys" in between verses that wouldn't be out of place in Horatio Hornblower, or "Smashing Pumpkins, I _know_ , right?" about a gentle, piano-accented lullaby.

Laurel grinned to herself when Carly Rae Jepsen came on, and he sang along with only a slight, pink-cheeked glance in her direction.

For herself, she ate his peanut butter M&Ms, and watched him tinker, and made conversation. Like most conversations when you were alone, late at night, and halfway liked the person you were with (okay, more than halfway - his clear delight in the Black Canary was balm to her soul), the talk started small and got deep and philosophical in a hurry. Without drinking, even. Yay, Laurel.

She propped herself on the edge of his lab table, next to the tray of tiny screwdrivers. Every time he reached for one, his fingers almost brushed her hip. She didn't move.

She noted, with a warm little glow in her belly, that he had plenty of space to shift the tray over, but didn't.

"You know," she said, poking around the M&M bag for a blue one, "in my experience, doing what I do? It's the people who say things like 'I'm an open book' are the ones who have all the secrets."

"Your sample may be a little skewed," he pointed out. "Doing what you do."

"Let me guess. You think people are basically good?"

"Sure, most people. But you don't."

"No, I don't. But I think you say that because you're a good person."

"So, what does that make you?"

She looked down into the candy bag for a moment, feeling her mouth twist in a not-smile.

"See, I don't agree," he said, angling his light onto the prototype and sliding a pair of magnification goggles over his eyes for a moment. He made a happy noise, shoved the goggles up, and pulled out a set of calipers. "I think you are a good person."

That was a novel position. "Why's that?"

"Because you do what you do," he said, measuring the mechanism on all three sides and scribbling the numbers onto a pad of graph paper. "Even though you think it's an uphill battle against people's basic terribleness."

She pointed at him. "And we're back to my theory."

He considered the numbers a moment. "So none of my prefab casings are going to be quite right. It'll rattle around too much. I'll have to use the 3-D printer. It'll mean we're here another hour at least, if that's okay."

"That's fine. But you're avoiding the question."

A little smile played around his lips. "Did you ask me a question?"

"Tell me a secret."

"Mmm." He put the guts of the Canary Cry into a scanner and watched the blue light play over the outside, taking in all the nooks and crannies.

"Come on. A secret. Just one. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering. We just met. All I want to know is something that not many people know about you."

He tilted his head so his hair slid over his face, and rummaged in a drawer. He showed her a piece of paper with flat plastic squares in different colors. "We've got some color choices here."

"How about black? Or maybe black. Oh, on second thought, black would be nice."

"I've got a bright yellow. Cheerful."

She arched a brow.

He laughed. "Yeah, okay, black." He studied the bottom row, then tapped one. "Matte? So no reflections?"

"Sounds right." She crossed her arms. "Are you going to plead the Fifth, Mr. Ramon?"

He grinned at the legalese. "Okay, Counselor. When I was in college, I taught myself to play guitar."

"Really."

"Mhm."

"Do you still play?"

He lifted one shoulder, let it drop. "Nah. When I had to, uh, leave school and move back home, I gave it to one of my buddies."

"Why?"

The scanner beeped. He pulled up the wire-frame model on a screen and studied it, then pulled out a stylus and sketched a casing around it. "I have this brother."

"Would he have given you crap?"

"Not quite the way you're thinking." He went over the corners again, smoothing them, rounding them. "He plays piano. He's really good. Always has been. So music is sort of his thing, you know. Not mine."

"And he would have made sure you knew that."

He gave the overly diffident, one-shoulder shrug again. "I liked playing, but not enough to put up with that."

She wondered if he realized how many secrets he'd let slip. Much more than a hobby he'd picked up and put down again. Maybe he did. Maybe this was his way of letting them out.

He tapped a few buttons, studied the casing design, then tipped the screen toward her. "What do you think?"

She examined it, touching a finger to the hollow of her throat where they'd planned it would go. "Can I try it on?"

"Sure, when it prints up." He rolled his chair over to a table with a cube that looked like something off the set of the _Enterprise_. He removed a coil of dark red plastic, gently unhooking one end from the top of the printer, and set it aside. "I'm going to print the casing in two pieces so they'll snap together over the innards. That way you'll be able to pop it open and tweak it if you need."

"More like you'll be able to," she said dryly. "Because honestly, I stopped understanding what you were doing about two hours ago. If it breaks, I'm sending it right back to the manufacturer."

"Lifetime warranty," he said, and dove into a drawer.

"So how did it go over? At college. The guitar."

"Oh." He glanced up from a drawer with a grin. "Really well."

"Not surprising."

He pulled out a coil of dull black and carefully fitted it onto the printer. "Yeah, turns out college kids really like a guy who can play guitar."

She got up from the table and went closer, under the guise of studying the printer. "You know something else?"

"Mmm?" He tapped a few buttons on his tablet, and the space-age device came to life, lights glinting and mechanics whirring.

"It's not just college kids."

He looked up.

She smiled at him, feeling a little shaky. She was bad at this these days.

He put the tablet down slowly. "You, uh. You don't have a villainous ulterior motive, do you?"

Her back went stiff. "What?"

"Sorry, sorry, I meant - well, the last person who, um, was interested -"

She relaxed. Jesus, Laurel. You're so prickly. "Villainous ulterior motives?"

"Yeah, so much."

"I understand being gun-shy after that. But I promise you. What you see is what you get. If you want it."

He looked at her - not up and down, which she'd half-expected, but at her face. Her eyes. She bit her lip, and his gaze dropped to her mouth for a minute. It looked like he caught his breath.

He got to his feet. "I want it."

"Open your book, Cisco Ramon," she whispered, and kissed him.

FINIS


End file.
